


Knock on my Door

by sugarboat



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Graphic Description of Injuries, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Weird Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 21:38:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9846425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: It's a story old as Time Baby: Boy meets Triangle, Triangle betrays Boy, Boy gets horribly mauled in a faraway dimension and Triangle takes it upon itself to help out.





	

Where had he heard it before? _Wounded animals will hide themselves away._ He’d read it somewhere, right? And someone – probably Stan – had said: _to die?_ Ford felt pathetically like one in this moment. A wounded animal. A _dying_ animal, but that was just a dose of melodramatics on his part. Sure, his shoulder felt like it was going to fall off, taking his arm with it. Sure, he could feel loose flaps of skin slapping up and down with every step. Sure, well, he actually wasn’t sure, if the line of soaked clothing down his left flank was sopped with blood or saliva or sweat, all he knew was the cool, sucking tug of it as it clung to his arm and chest and ribs, the uncomfortable itch of it at his hips. 

Sure, he was dizzy and his mouth felt dry. And at times his eyes would flicker, his vision splintering into doubles. But he wasn’t _dying_. Ford couldn’t die out here. Not when doing so would leave so much else undone. His mistake was still out there, a handful of code and a button smash away from lurching back into motion. And Bill was still out there, crouched like a stinging insect, a caverning, tumorous growth on the multiverse that he planned to excise.

And he still had to tell Stanley- _No._

And he still had to tell Fiddleford- _No!_

 _Breathe,_ he told himself, and he would have said it aloud had he the breath to gasp it with. His lungs were burning. The adrenaline that had fueled him thus far had to be winding down – heat was beginning to radiate from his wound, from the muddily defined and sheared oval where the creature had clamped down on him with its jaws. God, Ford had _heard_ the sound of its teeth scraping along his bones. The groan of his joint as it dug in deeper, deeper, clenched him between its teeth. The fetid, rotten-meat stink of its mouth as it panted and growled in his face, the speckles of viscous, foamy spittle that had sprayed across his hair and cheek while dense globs of it trailed down its teeth, into his arm, dripped down over his body in long stretchy strings. The soft sound that was like a damp paper bag being ripped apart, as he was shaken violently in its grip, and Ford had known it as the sound of his skin and muscle tearing.

Nausea flared up bright and sudden, a hot, acidic surge that burned in the back of his throat, and Ford had to stop to heave. It splattered wet and thick on the ground, between the spread fingers that had risen automatically to his mouth. He stumbled away, limbs shaking. Something chimed in the back of his mind, a little warning bell that tolled, but he couldn’t bear to examine the emesis any further. If the bright arterial red that he dreaded was present, what was there to do? Best not to open that door at all. 

The rest of his travel passed as a blur. His gait turned to shambling, meandering steps, his body visibly swaying whenever he caught a chance to pause and rest. The rumbling of the dark sky grew louder, clouds swollen and bloated with the threat of rain. Ford was passing through a wood of white trees, their limbs a delicate tangle that he crashed through, to the cave he had taken shelter in, and the irony – or perhaps merely the mimicry – of his situation was not lost on him. When the first heavy drop of rain landed on his forehead, the only reaction that came was relief as the droplet cut through the heat of his skin. 

His right hand was shaking and smeared liberally with bile, and blood from holding his injured shoulder in place. Without the support of his other hand, Ford felt his left arm sag. It had only been a few years since he was thrown out of his home dimension, but experience had taught him already the importance of carrying his own medical supplies. He fumbled with the lock but managed to get his supply kit open, grimacing at its contents. They had been running low for some time, Ford _knew_ that, but every city had been plastered with pictures of his face, thrumming with creatures that turned to track his movements within a crowd, eyes that watched him far too closely and searched him for weapons or obvious injury.

He had put it off. Until he found a safer dimension, he’d said. Until he’d be able to scrape together more funds. And really, while he might have been prone to injuries at the beginning of his journey, who was to say that he would need any of these supplies in the near future? Ford was a fast study, decisive and quick on his feet – what, truly, were the chances?

Apparently, he managed to think ruefully, through the sluggish daze of his thoughts, the chances were quite good. 

Ford had to waste the last of his potable water rinsing the grim off his hands. Then he sat by the lip of the cave, left arm propped up on a protruding rock formation, and began to cut away at the shredded remains of his shirt and jacket. Each frayed thread of his coat took multiple snips of his scissors to get through, so that sweat soon dripped down his forehead, the muscles of his right arm burning from the awkward angle he was forced to work from. Ford concentrated on the frustration, jaw clenched tight. Not on the inflamed, almost pulp-like mass of ravaged skin he was slowly beginning to see more and more of. 

Just one step at a time. His head was swimming. Get the fabric out of the way, get a clear view of the wound. His pulse was pounding again, and he imagined he could feel a viscous gush of blood oozing out of his shoulder and arm at every beat. Ford cut along from his collar to the bony protrusion of his acromion process and then cut down, until he could rip the entire sleeve free of his left arm. He leaned his head back, turned his face to press his cheek against the cool, scratchy surface of the rock wall behind him. 

Maybe he should take a break – a quick one. His eyes were burning. His head was throbbing. What harm would a minute or two bring? And he was so tired. When was the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s rest? A year, at the very least. If he was being honest, it was even more than that. Not since before the portal. Those early days with Bill, where he was more than eager to sleep, where each day was an opportunity, a new adventure; not fueled by necessity or obsession, but pure scientific wonderment. 

In fact, he could remember a particular summer’s afternoon that he had spent on the small, supposedly monster-ridden Scuttlebutt Island. Ford had fallen asleep sprawled on one of the gritty, sandy beaches, the sun blinding even through his eyelids, heating every inch of his body, remaining just shy of unbearable. Bill had shown up like a sunburst, and when Ford had risen to greet him a hand had shoved through the shifting sands and pulled him back down. 

He had felt more than saw Bill settle into the sand at his side. One of his muse’s small hands had drifted across the bulge of a rib, and then he began to talk. Bill talked about another dimension – not Ford’s and not his; a dimension that he said didn’t exist anymore. It’d contained a planet that was nothing but a thin, snakelike island, looping and doubling back on itself as it meandered around its equator. Beaches that stretched for miles and miles and miles, dotted with hidden coves and basins its denizen would sneak away to. Ocean waters that were a rich, velvet purple, and far below the surface, rocks that glowed pink and orange and verdant in the sun-starved depths of the sea. 

It had been so easy to picture it, lying there on the beach. Bill’s voice steady, his hand sweeping back and forth over his skin, a grounding and electrifying anchor. An afternoon spent drowsing next to his muse, imagining far away and bizarre lands, and the creatures that inhabited them. Ford could remember one in particular, an eel large enough to swallow cruise liners whole. Bill had said you could see through its translucent body to the vibrantly colored spines within, and its organs that changed hues according to its digestion cycle. _Really! They’re only dangerous when they’re yellow, but they’re yellow most of the time!_

Should Ford have taken that as a warning? There were so many things Bill had said and done that, with revelation and retrospect, had taken on sinister and even cautionary tones. Like Bill had been dropping hints along the way, just to rub them in Ford’s face one day. It could almost be considered plausible deniability, but Ford severely doubted that Bill cared enough to claim any form of deniability. Ford could ( _had_ ) accuse him of deceit and treachery, and all Bill would do is laugh and tell him what a _sucker_ he had been.

 _There’s a sucker born every minute._ A favorite saying among his family members, and Ford guessed that the minute he and Stan were born, he was the dupe. 

It was close to this time that Ford realized his arm was no longer hurting. There was no universe in which that was a good sign. His eyes flew open, to the further realization that he was no longer in his _body_ , instead floating in the muggy air of the cavern, and his first thought was to wonder if he had died. And his second thought was that something even _worse_ had happened, as he watched his body jerking to life without him.

“Bill!” Hollow ringing and strangely empty, as it had always sounded when Bill shoved him out of his body. 

“In the flesh, Fordsy! Your flesh if we’re talking specifics!” And Bill, peppy as always, though coming through Ford’s vocal cords the words had a coarse edge to them. “Took you long enough to notice!”

“Get out! Get out of my body, Bill!” He knew it wouldn’t do any good, but Ford lunged towards himself anyway, unsurprised when he flew through his body and the wall behind him. It still annoyed him.

“Nah, I don’t think I will,” Bill answered, and Ford got back just in time to watch him stagger to his feet. Bill had to steady himself against the stone formation for a moment, hunched over and breathing raggedly. Ford felt something like cold dread hammering in his chest as he watched himself, the way his chest seemed to quiver and shake on every inhale, his face not warped with the casual grin Bill usually forced, but twisted with exertion. 

“What are you doing here?” 

“You’re the _genius_ here IQ, I’m sure you can figure it out.” Bill lurched upwards again, and curled the fingers of his right hand into one of the deep puncture wounds along his bicep. He reached out and began smearing his blood across the bumpy cavern wall, dipping back in frequently to rewet his fingers.

“Everything is under control,” Ford said. He threw his hands up in the air and rolled his eyes when he saw Bill was painting a crude triangle on the wall in his blood. “What are you doing?”

“Everything is under control,” Bill repeated nasally. “I’m Dr. Stanford Pines, I have 12 PhDs but not one of them is in self-preservation, I go to sleep when I’m bleeding out all over the wall and floor of a creepy cave seventeen dimensions to the left of my own.”

“I was not sleeping-”

At that, Bill turned around, and the unimpressed stare he leveled towards Ford was only slightly diminished by the way Bill wobbled about on his shaky legs. It shouldn’t be possible, but Ford felt heat creeping up his neck, as though his face was flushing. 

“I was just resting for a moment,” Ford said. His gaze skipped off Bill to the rock he had been leaned against, the long smear of wet blood he had left behind. How long _had_ he been out before Bill took over? 

“Glad to see you’ve taken the whole time-is-relative-and-meaning-has-no-meaning-thing to heart!” Over Bill’s shoulders, Ford noticed that the red triangle on the wall was glowing, and a bulbous eye opened up in its center. Its slit pupil widened and then constricted, focusing, and Bill twisted his body around before it, like he was posing in front of a strange and grotesque mirror. 

Ford couldn’t help but to hover closer, wringing his hands without thought as he crept closer to his ruined shoulder. It was still difficult to see but what was visible didn’t look good. If he were still corporeal, he might have felt dizzy. None of the form of his joint had been left intact; in fact, his entire shoulder reminded Ford of the end of a chewed dog toy, mushed and uneven and raggedly torn.

“I-I-I need to...” 

“Relax, IQ!” Bill snapped. He stepped outside to where the rain had picked up. Ford hadn’t even noticed when it had turned from a drizzle to a downpour, and part of him wanted to again try and stop Bill – who knew what was in the rain water on this planet, he hadn’t had the chance to examine it yet – but he watched his former muse who with teeth grit and eyes clenched shut was scrubbing his wounds clean, and he remained quiet. 

His left arm hung abnormally low, like it was dangling from stretched out muscles and ligaments, the bone no doubt forced from its socket. Bill slunk back inside and flopped down. He shucked the remains of Ford’s jacket, dropping it without fanfare to the hard, dirt strewn floor. His shirt followed, but this Bill kept in his lap, and began ripping into long, thin strips. Ford’s left hand had to be purposefully arranged, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the sight of his fingers’ fitful twitching, barely able to close into a fist.

Even so, there was a bizarre comfort in the rhythmic shredding, its sound low and steady, evenly paced. Soon Bill had an overflowing handful of shoddy ribbons, which he heaped in a pile on the shelf-like rock beside him. Then Ford watched his body lean over, rummaging through his meagre medical supplies. Ford felt a little lost, like he was a child once more, hiding behind the door to his room and listening to his parents arguing, waiting for Stanley to come back in and tell him everything was going to be fine. 

Something warm and soft wrapped around his legs, and Ford yelped, certain he was going to have a heart attack, or a seizure, or whatever happened to consciousnesses that had been stripped from their bodies. He wasn’t even sure _how_ something had grabbed onto him but he struggled against its insistent grip all the same, rapidly losing his calm as the thing slung itself upwards, winding around him in quick coils. 

“B-Bill! Help-” The rest of his sentence was muffled as the thing looped a slim protrusion across his mouth.

“Help! As in, exactly what I’m doing?” Ford continued to panic, convinced that Bill was distracted, that his muse - _former!_ \- hadn’t noticed some other dimensional being slip inside with them. Until Ford happened to glance at the wall and found the triangular mark still glowing, staring at him in a way that he could almost imagine was… disapproving. Bill and the sigil on the wall rolled their eyes in unison. “I’m trying to get you to calm down. That’s what you wanted, right? Some of that, what is it, human empathy?” 

The tendril wrapped around his body constricted him tightly and then relaxed, until it dangled from his arms and legs in lazy rings, running up his chest in a spiraling pattern. It dropped away from his mouth, and its tip brushed up and down his cheek, almost like an apology. Against his better judgment and all reason pointing him otherwise, Ford found himself leaning into its strange embrace. It rewarded him by squeezing, supporting his incorporeal form, and Ford felt it rippling against his body, undulating in slow waves. 

Bill didn’t seem like he was paying either of them any mind, busy dumping a dark brown solution over his shorn piles of cloth, soaking the thin fabric, but the eye on the wall remained locked on Ford. It was nostalgic, painfully so. Ford clenched his jaw shut tight and said nothing. A few moments passed in silence aside from the dull pitter-pattering of rain on the canopy of trees just outside, an imaginary heartbeat Ford couldn’t actually feel at the moment slowing. Ford let his eyes drift closed.

Absurd, this was all absurd. He and Bill were enemies. Ford was the one who would put an end to all of Bill’s mischief and monstrosity, someday soon. Their friendship, if there was still anyone left who would call it such, had been based on lies and convenience, and carelessly discarded at its first disposable instant. And Ford had been the only one to lose anything – to lose _everything_ , and here he was still, lost and alone in an unkind dimension, hunted and stalked by half the multiverse.

And the cause of it all was in his body, had a projection swaddled around him in some simulacrum of kindness. It would make him feel nauseous if he were still in his skin. Ford opened his eyes again. Bill was packing the medicinally soaked strips into his deeper wounds, humming a discordant tune. When he noticed Ford watching he stopped long enough to say:

“Fluff, not stuff!”

And then resumed his actions. A movement on the wall caught Ford’s attention. He looked towards it in time to see the triangle’s eye wink at him and turn into a mouth, which promptly stuck its tongue out at him. 

“Absurd,” Ford said, but saying it aloud didn't make any more sense of his current situation. He was pinned somewhere between exasperation and amusement. 

“Absurdity, like its ugly cousin Beauty, is all in the eye of the beholder, Fordsy! Which, speaking of, have you run into one yet?”

“A Beholder?”

“You bet! They’re not quite like the ones in that dumb game of yours – they have even more eyes if you can believe it – but it’s a bit of a unique coincidence all the same!” 

“Serendipitous,” Ford replied.

“Absurd!” 

Ford couldn’t help the smile that wormed its way to his face this time. He and the sigil on the wall both watched in silence as Bill began to spool gauze around his arm and shoulder. It was, Ford had to admit, at least a little impressive. And surprising. Bill had never shown much interest in preserving human life, as opposed to his blatant interest in endangering it. Not to mention he was working with one arm, in a body suffering from a severe blood volume deficit and untold traumatic damage. 

“Well!” Bill said abruptly. “I’m out of stuff to do!” He leapt to his feet, and had to place a stabilizing hand on the wall behind him. “If you stay out here, you’re gonna die!” Ford had been on the verge of thanking him. “Lucky you, I happen to know of a few less than totally scrupulous surgeons that would be willing to work on you on the down low!”

“Bill,” Ford began, trying to disentangle himself from the clingy tentacle, “there are a number of reasons that avenue is not open to me. The most immediate of which being the _bounty_ you’ve placed on my head, which I’m sure ‘less than totally scrupulous’ doctors would be more than happy to collect.” The tentacle remained firmly wrapped around him, regardless of his squirming.

“Ah, don’t worry about that stuff Sixer! It’s above your paygrade! Get yourself there, and it’ll all work itself out!” 

The tendril dissipated in thin streams of billowing smoke, and with it gone so entirely Ford found himself wanting it back. 

“What, I’m supposed to just-” _trust you?_

“Just walk right in! It’ll be fine, scout’s honor!” Bill held up his hand in an old eagle scouts salute that Ford barely remembered Stan giving all the time. “Fine, pinky promise?” He extended his hand out towards Ford’s form, and Ford rolled his eyes and stretched his own to grasp it. As soon as he did, he found himself thrust back into his body, feeling as though he’d been dropped off a cliff side to do so. 

He had been left utterly alone, with his arm and shoulder throwing off deep and constant spikes of agony. Bill had been thoughtful enough to fashion him some sort of sling for his injured arm to lie in, but there was nothing here he could do for the pain. The triangle was still on the wall, murky and dull now that he was once more planted firmly in the physical dimension. Beneath it was a barebones map – just the cave he was in, a few major landmarks, and a dotted line which Ford assumed he was meant to follow.

When had Bill even had time to draw this sketchy, nigh-illegible scribble? It must have been sometime while Ford was resting, and somehow its mere presence irritated him. Bill had drawn it up before Ford had agreed to anything, just assuming that he was going to do what he was told - a trait Bill shared with Stanley. It made Ford want to dig his heels in and live in this cave until he _died_ , but there was an unfortunately very real concern that said death would come rather quickly. 

Ford committed the crude map to memory and spent a few hobbled minutes gathering what supplies he could reasonably carry in his state. What was left of the medical supplies – some Band-Aids with _you’re an all star!_ printed on them, some tape, about half a roll of gauze – was left where it lie, and Ford spared about half a thought to hope it might benefit some other traveler one day. All that left him was a few pieces of soy bread, an empty canteen, and a busted Walkman that had somehow become attuned to Interdimensional Talk Radio (which was surprisingly similar to the talk radio he remembered from Earth, except it managed to be even more inflammatory). 

Ford put on the mangled remains of his jacket and headed out.

A few short weeks later he was slipping out the back of what could only – generously – be called an organ harvesting farm. And yet somehow, true to Bill’s word, they had cared for him, even rehabilitated him until function had been restored to his left arm. The only proof left behind was a tangled mess of puckered scar tissue, and the assurance that he would always know when it was going to rain from here on out. 

On his way out, Ford had spotted a stack of wanted posters at a ‘nurse’ station, and had snagged one for himself. Now he stared down at the crumpled flyer in his hands, unsure what the fluttering feeling in his stomach was meant to be telling him.

_WANTED: ALIVE_

_Stanford Pines, of dimension YOU KNOW THE ONE!_

_LIMITED TIME OFFER! REWARD DOUBLED FOR RETURN WITH ALL **FOUR** FUNCTIONING HUMAN LIMBS INTACT!_

_ACT FAST! RULES AND RESTRICTIONS APPLY! SEE **BILL CIPHER** FOR DETAILS! Conveniently located in your DREAMS, NIGHTMARES, and in CERTAIN DIMENSIONS, that CRAWLSPACE IN THE ATTIC YOU’VE BEEN AFRAID TO GO IN!_


End file.
